The Art of Queenship in the Hellenistic World

This book explores how ancient queens were important subjects and patrons of dynastic art. artistic expressions of political power.

Patricia Eunji Kim (Author)

9781009502122, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 July 2025

320 pages
25.9 x 18.6 x 2.1 cm, 0.8 kg

In The Art of Queenship in the Hellenistic World, Patricia Eunji Kim examines the visual and material cultures of Hellenistic queens, the royal and dynastic women who served as subjects and patrons of art. Exploring evidence in the interconnected eastern Mediterranean and western Asia from the fourth to second centuries BCE, Kim argues that the arts of queenship were central to expressions of dynastic (and sometimes even imperial) consolidation, continuity, and legitimacy. From gems, coins, and vessels to monuments and sculpture, the visual and material cultures of queenship appeared in a range of sacred settings, public spaces, royal courts, and domestic domains. Encompassing several dynasties, including the Hecatomnids, Argeads, Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Attalids, Kim inaugurates new methods for comparing and interpreting visual articulations of queenship and ideal femininity from distinct yet culturally entangled contexts, thus illuminating the ways that women had an impact art and politics in the ancient world.

Abbreviations and sources
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Engendering dynasty: monumental women and public sculpture
2. Foreign royal wives from Asia and objects of Hellenistic queenship
3. (Be)Holding the beautiful bodies of Ptolemaic queens
4. Imperial kinship and care in portrayals of Seleucid queenship
5. Royal mothers and Attalid dynastic monuments
Conclusion: looking for queens
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]